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We wanted to make a quick post about something we’ve been working on for quite some time now…our bathroom theme! Introducing, the world’s cutest and most awesomely-themed bathroom (own horn = tooted). The theme for our bathroom is “I See London, I See France…” Pretty clever, huh?

I’m a total Pinterest freak – absorbing as much media as I possibly can at a clip, even if I’m never going to bake that fancy pie or DIY that pallet coffee table, I like seeing it, reading about it and being inspired. So, although Pinterest and the internet cannot take full credit for this idea, I must say I am always inspired by what I see out there. I’ve never seen or heard of anyone else doing this same theme for a bathroom. However, inspiration for the little details comes from all over:

White ceramic faux animal head: You’ve probably seen these before, mostly in the form of a deer an antelope, or some other long-horned creature. Ours comes in the form of the majestic, elegant creature that is…the English Bulldog. Our inspiration for the piece had to do with a few things: 1. It was 5 bucks at Christmas Tree Shops. 2. We like the faux animal head idea, especially the all-white look. And 3. This little guy:This 65-pound beast beauty is none other than Crumpler. Some of our devoted readers and followers know him well. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, just take it all in – this little bugger is a true English gent with a colorful personality and a face only a mother could love. Cheerio!

White floating shelves: We used this in a different space in our last house. Now that we have a normal-sized bathroom, we thought they would make a lot of sense in this space. Now we just need to really deck them out with some more London and France-themed things.

Canvas prints: These museum-quality canvas prints come from one of the many online spots where you can fashion your personal prints onto just about anything. I made both graphics in Photoshop and we used EasyCanvasPrints.com to get these fun and vibrant pieces of art slapped onto a canvas. Nice touch with the “Oui Oui”, right? Gotta love bathroom humor…

We also have an older piece of wall art featuring a sketched, black and white Big Ben. This fit perfectly with the theme, so of course it belongs in the bathroom.

We still have one blank wall to fill, which just means more London and France-themed fun to be had.

Our love of London comes from the time Andrew and I spent abroad, studying in Kingston-Upon-Thames back in college. You can read all about that here.

So, it is no secret that we aren’t working on the house everyday. Its true that the folks at Lowe’s don’t know us by our first names. We do however, spend what feels like all of our free time working on or thinking about the house. Between the wedding and the house hunting and the house buying and the house fixing and the yard work, we haven’t really taken much time in the last 6 months to just relax. This weekend we “took the weekend off.” Well, as much as we can take off. I decided to make good use of our time and teach Megan about lighthouses and some of our surrounding areas. We went to Sandy Hook and Fort Hancock, NJ, which are parts of the Gateway National Recreation Area. Without getting too deep into it, Sandy Hook (from the Dutch word “Hoek,” meaning “spit of land”) is a narrow spit of land that naturally guards Lower New York Harbor and the Raritan Bay from the Atlantic Ocean.

That’s the view from the tip of the hook. The National Park is home to Sandy Hook Light, which is the oldest working lighthouse in the country. It is also home to all sorts of other fun stuff; a U.S. Coast Guard station, an army installment dating back before WWI, a stash of Nike missiles, some crazy flora & fauna and some great views of the greater NY/NJ area. I think my favorite part about Sandy Hook is the feeling you get when you’re mere miles from one of the largest cities in the world, yet you feel quite remote and alone.

That view is looking back at the mainland. Our house would be somewhere along that far ridge and about 10 miles to the right. As part of our “weekend off” we didn’t bring our camera, so we just snapped a few phone photos. We toured a few more parks in the area and enjoyed the fall foliage before heading home to, you guessed it, get some work done. OK, so we broke our own rule. Big deal. We got some a lot of yard work done and hung some new blinds. For more about that you’ll have to wait for another blog post!

That’s right, folks. We’re getting hitched today, 9-30-2011! Then we’re heading down to Mexico for a week, so we’ll see ya when we see ya! But stay tuned – we may do some tweeting from Mexico, so be sure to follow us on Twitter! We’ll have plenty of great wedding + vacation photos and stories for you when we return!